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I’ve known about Epstein’s involvement with the MIT Media Lab and Joi Ito from the moment Joi shared his public apology. I joined the Media Lab as faculty before Joi joined as director. I have a few thoughts to share... [open thread] 1/
For weeks I’ve silently observed the situation. I am no longer affiliated with MIT and I have accepted a Chaired position at the University of Toulouse. After reading the New Yorker story, however, I feel the responsibility to share my experience 2/ newyorker.com/news/news-desk…
I have little to contribute to Epstein’s ties to the lab. It has all been news to me. Nevertheless, I have a few things to say about the environment where this happened. The environment can help us understand the conditions that allowed the reported behaviors. 3/
I was a faculty at the media lab for nearly a decade, first as an assistant, and then as an associate professor. I directed the Collective Learning group, that had nearly 20 people at some point. But was I really a “member” of the media lab faculty? 4/
On the one hand, I looked like one. I published papers and projects, and in 2018, I ranked 5th among all media lab faculty (senior and junior) in number of citations received during that year according to Google Scholar 5/
But on the other hand. I was constantly marginalized and excluded. Let me share with you a few anecdotes of what it meant to be the only Hispanic member in the history of the MIT Media Lab. 6/
A few years after Joi became director, he organized an event on minorities in science. I was not invited to present & learned about it when a member of the staff came to my class & asked me to move it to another room because they needed it for the event 7/
Yes. The only Hispanic member of the lab was kicked out of a classroom for Joi’s “minorities in science event.” I have a PhD in physics by the way. During my decade at the lab I also had two 1-on-1 meetings with Joi, & when I requested them I was put on a waitlist of months. 8/
That was not equal treatment. I remember a colleague saying to the visiting committee how much they enjoyed having Joi as director because they could call him anytime they wanted, even in the middle of the night. That was not true for the only Hispanic faculty at the lab. 9/
The Media Lab had less than 30 faculty, yet, I still had less access to the director than Epstein did. But while I have a decade of similar stories. My intention is not simply to smear a leader that has been proven to be aware of his wrongdoing 10/: newyorker.com/news/news-desk…
The lab has good things, and I did learn plenty during my decade there. Before joining the Media Lab I knew how to produce papers. I didnt know how to make products & I learned that while at the lab. I am grateful for these lessons. 11/
Yet the lab was also a strange environment. A place filled with stars, but without a galaxy. A place rich in physical & human capital, but dire in social capital. A place that was easy to capture politically by someone cunning. 12/
I remember a faculty meeting where a senior faculty asked Joi for a small pool of funds to run an academic seminar. The director had its own “talk show” in the atrium that he used to invite his friends (not an academic seminar). 13/
Joi simply cut the initiative off and told the faculty to send suggestions to his team for consideration in his atrium event. The senior faculty was visibly offended. I felt her pain. She was a well published scholar with a brilliant career and many decades at the lab. 14/
But she was cut off by a fake scholar building an “academic” career with blog posts & ghost writers. She sat there powerless after the interaction. We all remained silent. We lacked the social capital needed to read each other’s eyes quickly & push back 15/
The Media Lab has many brilliant scholars and inventors. I am in complete awe of their intellectual merit and contributions. But despite selling itself as a community, it is not. 16/
That’s why I was not surprised when I read Joi’s apology letter. I was not surprised that I never knew about it, and I was not surprised that it happened. As I argued above, I was an outcast in Joi’s plutocratic friendocracy. 17/
So I think it is time to cut the tumor and save the patient. The students at the media lab (old and new) do not deserve to be dragged down in their careers because of the misbehavior of the lab’s Director. They are innocent bystanders. 18/
Faculty, are not as innocent, but not in that they were complicit in the actions (some may have been), but in that they were unable to control the actions of the lab’s executive director. Let me explain. 19/
The lab was founded by a strong man who directed the lab with tough love & soul crushing comments. A Steve Jobs type if you may. That type of decisive rule may be acceptable for a visionary founder. After all it is their place & idea 20/
But that privilege & authority should not be inherited by a hired manager. After the founder left, the lab should have shifted from a “presidential” to a “parliamentary” regime, where the director was accountable to the senior faculty, not the opposite 21/.
To do that. The senior faculty needed more social capital among them. Without it, capture was imminent. Capture happened, and it opened space for the unaccountable behavior we now know 22/
Where will the lab go next? I have no vote or say. My hope is that the good people in the lab come together. There are many great people at the media lab, but the pool is shrinking. The lab has lost many of the faculty they hired since 2008 & there is big generational gap 23/
So it is time for the senior faculty to take the helm & create the community the lab said it had, but didn’t have. I will be happy to help and contribute. While I was emotionally beaten up by the lab in multiple occasions, I am not dead. I am bruised, but ready to help. 24/
I know the leadership of the lab, and the department head, are taking this seriously. Shame is only the beginning of the journey. A future is possible, if you don’t walk alone. Be strong. Do what’s right. You’ve pushed people out for less. 25/END
